Main menu

New Celebrity Health Fad: Freezing Yourself To Lose Weight

Celebrities, athletes and other wealthy folks are reportedly freezing their fat off in chambers filled with liquid nitrogen, also known as cryotherapy, in New York City.

At the KryoLife spa, people enter a giant cylinder that generates air between -184 and -292 degrees for three minutes. The frigid treatment can supposedly burn up to 800 calories, relax muscles and increase metabolisms, reports the New York Post.

Joanna Fryben, who owns KryoLife, said that she opened her spa in November 2013 and has seen her clients increase from 10 per day to 70.

A 180-second treatment clocks in at $90, or you can get 10 treatments for $700.

Whole-body cryotherapy treatments began in Japan in 1978 for treating arthritis, but are relatively new in the U.S.

The health treatments have reportedly caught on with celebs such as Lindsay Lohan, Mandy Moore, Yoko Ono, Derek Hough and Daniel Craig.

But what about the alleged benefits?

“The cooling of the body has an anti-inflammatory benefit,” Dr. Steven Levine told the New York Post. “But cryotherapy as you’re talking about it, is akin to a medical fad."

“If there was a way to burn 800 calories in three minutes, it would be a whole lot more popular than it is and a whole lot more than the $90 that they’re charging for it,” Levine added.

The KryoLife website never claims that the treatments will cause weight loss, but does state benefits such as: